November 30, 2006
A Red Harvest in the "Conflict Ecosystem"
Tigerhawk points to Ralph Peters' argument that Iraq is not in a state of civil war. From Peters:
The good news - and, unfortunately, the bad news - is that Iraq is not in a state of civil war in the textbook sense. If it were, our military and political mission would be easier.In a civil war, you have clearly defined sides struggling for political power, with organized military formations and parallel governments. You know who to kill and who is empowered to negotiate with you. You can pick a side and stick to it.
Unleashed, our military could smash any enemy in an open civil war. Even our diplomats would have trouble preventing an American victory.
But the violence in Iraq comes from overlapping groups of terrorists, militias, insurgents, death squads, gangsters, foreign agents and factionalized government security forces engaging in layers of savage religious, ethnic, political and economic struggles - with an all-too-human lust for revenge spicing the mix.
There is a genuine problem here: The ever-accelerating pace of change since the end of the Cold War has left us with an inadequate vocabulary. Words literally fail us. We don't know what to call things. No military lexicon offers a useful term to describe the situation in Iraq.
Commentary
Who's the best counterinsurgency theorist you know? I guarantee the best you've never heard of is David Kilcullen, an Australian, currently serving in the US State Department. Kilcullen led Aussie infantry units in East Timor and went on to get a PhD in the history of insurgency in Indonesia. Since the war in Iraq began he's written several articles describing the differences between classical counterinsurgencies and the one we face today. One article, Counterinsurgency Redux, contains this tidbit:
In modern counterinsurgency, the security force must control a complex "conflict ecosystem" -- rather than defeating a single specific insurgent adversary.That's the term that Peters is looking for: conflict ecosystem. Not only does it view things in organic and biological terms, but it allows for multiple actors pursuing multiple goals.Classical counterinsurgency focuses on securing the population rather than destroying the enemy. But it still fundamentally views the conflict as a binary struggle between one insurgent (or confederation) and one counterinsurgent (or coalition). Modern insurgencies belie this binary approach, since there are often multiple competing insurgent forces fighting each other as well as the government, and the "supported" government's interests may differ in key respects from those of its allies. Hence we might conceive of the environment as a "conflict ecosystem" with multiple competing entities seeking to maximize their survivability and influence. The counterinsurgent's task may no longer be to defeat the insurgent, but rather to impose order (to the degree possible) on an unstable and chaotic environment.
And not only that. Robert Kaplan famously wrote in 1994 of "The Coming Anarchy":
The degree to which Van Creveld's Transformation of War complements Homer-Dixon's work on the environment, Huntington's thoughts on cultural clash, my own realizations in traveling by foot, bus, and bush taxi in more than sixty countries, and America's sobering comeuppances in intractable-culture zones like Haiti and Somalia is startling. The book begins by demolishing the notion that men don't like to fight. "By compelling the senses to focus themselves on the here and now," Van Creveld writes, war "can cause a man to take his leave of them." As anybody who has had experience with Chetniks in Serbia, "technicals" in Somalia, Tontons Macoutes in Haiti, or soldiers in Sierra Leone can tell you, in places where the Western Enlightenment has not penetrated and where there has always been mass poverty, people find liberation in violence. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, I vicariously experienced this phenomenon: worrying about mines and ambushes frees you from worrying about mundane details of daily existence. If my own experience is too subjective, there is a wealth of data showing the sheer frequency of war, especially in the developing world since the Second World War. Physical aggression is a part of being human. Only when people attain a certain economic, educational, and cultural standard is this trait tranquilized. In light of the fact that 95 percent of the earth's population growth will be in the poorest areas of the globe, the question is not whether there will be war (there will be a lot of it) but what kind of war. And who will fight whom?Kaplan's incredible vision, nearly 12 years old, has come to pass. But where he sees an anarchy that betrays attempts to tame it, Kilcullen sees an ecosystem -- and ecosystems merely appear chaotic. In actuality, they are highly ordered, reflecting a sort of emergence that many complex systems display.[ . . . ]
Also, war-making entities will no longer be restricted to a specific territory. Loose and shadowy organisms such as Islamic terrorist organizations suggest why borders will mean increasingly little and sedimentary layers of tribalistic identity and control will mean more. "From the vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect that religious . . . fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of armed conflict" in the West than at any time "for the last 300 years," Van Creveld writes. This is why analysts like Michael Vlahos are closely monitoring religious cults. Vlahos says, "An ideology that challenges us may not take familiar form, like the old Nazis or Commies. It may not even engage us initially in ways that fit old threat markings." Van Creveld concludes, "Armed conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in space. It will have more in common with the struggles of primitive tribes than with large-scale conventional war." While another military historian, John Keegan, in his new book A History of Warfare, draws a more benign portrait of primitive man, it is important to point out that what Van Creveld really means is re-primitivized man: warrior societies operating at a time of unprecedented resource scarcity and planetary overcrowding.
Spengler, the pseudonymous columnist for the Asia Times, once wrote that the best strategy for the US in Iraq would be to adopt the philosophy of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, a nameless private detective, who in the novel Red Harvest
"Plans are all right sometimes ... And sometimes just stirring things up is all right - if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top."Spengler elaborated:
Americans want their tough guys to have a heart of gold. In the Kurosawa-Leone-Hill adaptations, the Toshiro Mifune-Clint Eastwood-Bruce Willis characters take great risk to aid a lady in distress. Hammett's Op cares neither about lady nor risk. His object is the mutual destruction of the contending parties, which he arranges with humor and enjoyment.And explained:At one point the Op arranges "a peace conference out of which at least a dozen killings ought to grow ... pretending I was trying to clear away everybody's misunderstandings ... and played them like you'd play trout, and got just as much fun out of it ... I looked at [the police chief] and knew he hadn't a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and I laughed, and felt warm and happy inside."
Fortunately for the United States, there still exist a few of the genuine article. In the 1920s, Hammett's character worked for the Continental Detective Agency. Today, he might be a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations.That's the trick isn't it? The US electorate may occasionally be asked to send their sons to die for democracy or their own freedom. But what if the truly necessary acts are simply the inducement of, and thriving upon, chaos? For that it takes a cynic, and cynicism doesn't well rally the public.Instability is his natural element. He acts unpredictably, even quirkily, to keep the other side off balance and to discover openings. The point is not so much that he despises authority, but rather that it is meaningless to give him orders. The more textbook counterinsurgency fails, the more responsibility will devolve to him. Frustrated military commanders will whisper, "Take care of this for me, and don't tell me how you did it," and let slip this particular dog of war.
All of this is a far cry from the idea pummelled into our minds for nearly four years: the absolute necessity of "a plan" for the war. Yet in a conflict ecosystem, the law of the jungle may well apply instead of the law of the operations order. Perhaps anarchy is our best friend.
Written by Chester at 11:39 PM | Link | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Sex in the Muslim world
Several articles of late have discussed the sex lives of Muslims (or the lack and frustration thereof). Der Spiegel reported a few weeks ago on the topic.
Rabat, Morocco. Every evening Amal the octopus vendor looks on as sin returns to his beach. It arrives in the form of handholding couples who hide behind the tall, castle-like quay walls in the city's harbor district to steal a few clandestine kisses. Some perform balancing acts on slippery rocks and seaweed to secure a spot close to the Atlantic Ocean and cuddle in the dim evening light. The air tastes of salt and hashish. On some mornings, when Amal finds used condoms on the beach, he wishes that these depraved, shameless sinners -- who aren't even married, he says -- would roast in hell.It's true. Here's the GoogleTrends report for "sex".[ . . . ]
A Moroccan study published in early 2006 in L'Economiste, a Moroccan business publication, shows how paradoxical young Arabs' attitudes toward religion and sexuality can be. According to the study, young Muslims in the Maghreb region are increasingly ignoring the clearly defined rules of their religion. Premarital sex is not unusual, and 56 percent of young men admit to watching porn on a regular basis. But the respondents also said that it was just as important to them to pray, observe the one-month Ramadan fast and marry a fellow Muslim. When seen in this light, young Muslims' approach to Islam seems as hedonistic as it is variable, almost arbitrary.
[ . . . ]
Google Trends, a new service offered by the search engine, provides a way to demonstrate how difficult it is to banish forbidden yearnings from the heads of Muslims. By entering the term "sex" into Google Trends, one obtains a ranked list of cities, countries and languages in which the term was entered most frequently. According to Google Trends, the Pakistanis search for "sex" most often, followed by the Egyptians. Iran and Morocco are in fourth and fifth, Indonesia is in seventh and Saudi Arabia in eighth place. The top city for "sex" searches is Cairo. When the terms "boy sex" or "man boy sex" are entered (many Internet filters catch the word "gay"), Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the first four countries listed.
There's more. An article in another German outlet discusses sex in Egypt.
A heavy testosterone cloud hovers over the city, clumps of young men that nobody needs in dusty street cafés. "People are sexually mature at the age of eleven or twelve," explains psychiatrist Ahmad Abdallah,who is the director of the youth clinic as well as the website IslamOnline. "But then it can take fifteen or twenty years before they have official sex because parents won't agree to a marriage until the son has a decent job, ideally as an engineer or a lawyer, and an apartment or at least enough money to feed a family." But there is almost no work to be had. The number of Egyptians increases each year by 1.5 million, the minor education and health reforms that Mubarak's government set in motion are being devoured by this "youth bulge."The interesting thing about this is that Bollywood films adhere to Indian standards for sexuality, meaning that couples are allowed to writhe against each other while partially clothed on film, but not even kissing is allowed.Those who want to break the sex prohibition have to do it in a car or simply in the street dust. On some evenings, you can see one Citroen after the next parked on the strip next to the Egyptian museum. Youths who go to American films and wish to melt into the intimacies shown risk being branded as traitors, and so they sneak into hysterical Bollywood soap operas or Egyptian productions with the kohl-eyes and the constant moaning and screaming that is supposed to represent passion.
And in another article in Der Spiegel, the sad tale of an Iranian actress unknowingly caught in flagrante on video is related:
Actress Sahra Amir Ebrahimi is familiar with the role of the bad girl - the fiery-eyed young woman based her career on it. Her screen persona, the beasty little character Sohre, is one of the protagonists of the cult series "Narges" -- and Sohre is known for her intrigues and machinations.[ . . . ]
But that's all over now.
Twenty-five-year-old Ebrahimi is said to have appeared in a porn flick that is selling like hot cakes on street stands across the country, and ever since, she's been considered a hussy in real life too. What, people are asking, drove the Islamic Republic's most promising soap star -- normally seen dutifully wearing her headscarf and an ankle-length coat -- to perform on a narrow bed in front of a shaky camera?
In the prudish mullah republic, even tame films of private pool parties meet with eager customers on the black market. But demand for Ebrahimi's unexpected onscreen performance is literally unbelievable. Despite its comparatively steep price of €10 ($13), it is believed that more than 100,000 copies of the cheap DVD have been sold in Tehran.
Commentary
It was the 1950s that preceded the 1960s both chronologically and culturally in America's psyche. Forget about democracy. Might there be a correlation between sexual repression and attraction to terrorism? Maybe it's not freedom the Muslim world needs, but free love.
Written by Chester at 11:11 PM | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Interview at the D-Ring
The proprietor of the D-Ring blog has seen fit to do a quick interview with me. If you're interested, read it here.
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November 29, 2006
Followup to Going Native
My article at TCSDaily, "Go Native" has received a little bit of commentary. I posted a link over at Windsofchange.net, and it received about 20 comments, with a generally supportive take. Several folks here have given positive comments too. Belmont Club just started a thread on it, and I'm sure the Belmont crowd will have a lot to say, as they always do. At TCS itself, there are over 140 comments to the article, many more than any other work I've done.
Some of them have been critical. TCS draws a crowd from far and wide. I think that's good. None of the critical comments have gotten under my skin. I wouldn't be a very good blogger if they did. But one in particular I thought deserved a note. One commenter writes this:
You won't risk your own life to "win the war" will you Josh? No, and I'll bet you anything you have no children over there dead and dieing do you? No, of course not, armchair racists don't join the military do they Josh? No, and don't give me that crap about being "too old"; you could get a job feeding the troops or driving a truck for Haliburton, but you're too afraid to even do that, aren't you? C'mon Mr. Brave NeoCon (NOT!!)admit the truth, you like this racist war just like the NeoCons of the day liked the racist war they sent me and few other dumb and naive racist Americans to fight in Vietnam. This is a war of liberation from occupiers that the local Iraqi's are fighting. We will lose, we've already lost. And all you coward NeoCons clamoring for the blood of 655,000 innocent Iraqi people are just full of sickness and dis-ease. That's what racism is, and you all are racists.I'm not sure how my article implies that I'm a racist. For that I'll have to have some more instruction from this commenter.
But I'd like to say once and for all that I think it's a very poor point to argue that only those who serve are allowed to voice an opinion on the war. Are doctors the only ones allowed an opinion on healthcare? Or to take another tack, are those with military service always correct? Were the US generals correct in the Cuban missile crisis in arguing for an attack, or was Kennedy? Perhaps all political issues should only be discussed by politicians. The problem then becomes where to draw the line at what is political and what is not. Most regimes that choose such a path usually end up deciding that everything is political. I think we can all come up with examples of such regimes.
It's an interesting argument that the Left likes to make: on the one hand, only those too stupid to get good jobs join the service. On the other, when it comes to military affairs, we should only listen to those who have served, whose pronouncements are received gospel, second only to their mothers, whose opinions have "absolute moral authority."
How strange.
Written by Chester at 7:05 PM | Link | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Not a pleasant conversation
From ABCNews:
A Marine officer, suspecting foul play or terrorism on the recent presidential visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, raised a security alarm after one of his men went missing for more than six hours, U.S. government sources tell ABC News.My guess is he's probably still being yelled at right now.The missing staff sergeant was a maintenance specialist assigned to the Marine One Presidential Helicopter detail. After a night out drinking with fellow Marines, the specialist "left his hotel on the back of a moped driven by a local national without telling anyone," a Marine Corps spokeswoman confirmed to ABC News.
[ . . . ]
The specialist finally surfaced the next morning, hung over and late for work. According to an official account provided to ABC News by the Marine Corps, he explained, "He had become inebriated and spent the night with the local national."
A spokeswoman for the elite HMX1 Marine Aviation Unit, who declined to reveal the Marine's identity, said, "There would be no disciplinary action because the staff sergeant was on liberty and so technically not AWOL." But she added, "More than likely his commanding officer spoke to him in extremely strong language."
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The silent service
The Washington Times carries an interesting article detailing modifications made to naval submarine doctrine and usage after 9/11.
Submarines have two attributes that make them effective against terrorists -- stealth and persistence. Unlike surface ships, submarines can stay concealed in the sea, rising to periscope depth to take pictures, listen to electronic transmissions and collect other intelligence. Unlike the airplanes or satellites that pass over a target, submarines can stay on station for weeks or months.
The fast attack submarines, in addition to traditional torpedoes, are armed with 12 cruise missiles with conventional warheads. The submarines can also land six-man special operations teams to collect intelligence or conduct raids, then return to pick up the teams.
The Pacific submarine fleet has had so many missions assigned to it recently that it no longer sends submarines to the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea to support the war in Iraq. That duty has been turned over to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
During the next five years, about eight submarines will be reassigned to the Pacific Fleet from the Atlantic, meaning the Pacific Fleet will account for about 60 percent of the submarine force. Two will be the USS Seawolf and USS Connecticut, the most advanced boats in the fleet. The home ports to which they will be assigned have not been decided yet, said a spokesman for the Pacific submarine command.
The newest addition to the Pacific Fleet is the USS Ohio, which has been converted from a ballistic missile submarine to a boat armed with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be fired covertly one at a time or many in a salvo. When launched near land, the cruise missiles can duck under a radar screen to hit targets before an adversary can react or they can loiter over a target shortly before striking.
Commentary
I love submarines. You know what submariners call surface ships? Targets.
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Damned if you do . . .
It's hard to know what to make of the New York Times. In its latest escapade, the Times has published an article titled, "Bush Adviser's Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader," which excerpts a classified report from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to the President. The memo supposedly questions Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's ability to control sectarian violence in Iraq and recommends that steps be taken to bolster his position.
The memo was reportedly produced by Hadley after a trip to Iraq and a meeting with Maliki that took place on October 30th.
Stop for a moment and completely disregard the content of the memo. Instead ask yourself: how long has the Times had this information? The memo is exactly one month old. Now ask yourself: why are they releasing this story on the very same day that Bush is set to meet with Maliki?
It is really hard to know what to make of the Times.
Written by Chester at 12:59 PM | Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 28, 2006
Blogroll addition
I've been meaning to add Herschel Smith's Captain's Journal for a couple of weeks. Mr. Smith's son is in Iraq as a Marine officer, if memory serves, and his blog is extremely detailed. Check it out.
Written by Chester at 9:24 PM | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Best and Worst of Blog Design, 2006
Forrester Research has completed a small study into blog design. The Executive Summary reads like this:
Forrester evaluated the customer experience of 16 blogs written by executives of large U.S. companies, corporate product and branding teams, newspaper journalists, and today's most popular professional bloggers. While product/brand teams fared best, not one blog passed our usability tests, and even the best blogs we looked at had major flaws. To encourage new users to become regular readers, blog owners should leverage existing web design best practices that make content and functionality easy to find and consume and follow emerging blog guidelines that help users feel more comfortable participating in online conversations.The only political blog in their study is DailyKos.
The entire study is here, for those who'd like to download it and read it [I don't think I'm infringing on any copyright laws by hosting it, but if so, I'll remove if necessary.] [UPDATE: I've removed the report temporarily due to concern that posting it may violate Forrester's licensing agreements.]
Commentary
Well, one best practice mentioned is to have a comment policy, so that novice users can know how to comment, how the info is used, etc. That's something I should do, I suppose.
Another of their beefs is that bloggers frequently use blog-specific terminology. I think I do an ok job on that one. The only such terms I use regularly are the "hat-tip", which means basically to give a quick nod to another blogger who drew your attention to something.
Another of their criticisms is that content is only organized chronologically. Well, I have a search function in the sidebar, and a list of tags that let people find content on the topic of their choice. It's true though that the primary organizing feature is date. I think this has more to do with the limitations of blogging software than anything else. If I wanted to organize things in a different fashion, I would have no idea how to do so. Perhaps this is a good critique for corporate blogs, who presumably have programmers or the budgets to hire them, but for little ole Chester, not so much.
This brings me to what is a tangential insight in the study, but was most interesting to me: it notes that only 7% of internet users read a blog more than once a week. Now that is something!
One of the big problems with blogging is the "echo-chamber" phenomenon. It's not only hard to describe, but it's very hard to quantify. Well, let me be precise: it's only a problem if you care about who is reading your work.
I've characterized my own desire to blog as being one of an intense desire to know what is happening in the war and to understand it. But I'd be more than a little dishonest with myself if I didn't admit that part of that is knowing that my musings have an impact on other people. I don't get super worked up about traffic statistics and whatnot, but it is nice to know that someone out there is reading and perhaps gaining some value from my work.
The idea that only 7% of internet users read blogs more than once a week cements in my mind what I think is one of the problems: bloggers (at least the crowd I run in) have a tendency to think that their topics are life and death matters of import to the country. But when you think about it, if only a very small number of people are reading, or caring, then your topic is really of no more influence than that of, say, home-schooling, or baseball-card collecting, or amateur poetry. In other words, you're just another community, an internet tribe, whose passion happens to be national security.
The flip side of the coin is to ask: well, who are those 7% of readers? Maybe they are decisionmakers or key influencers. Maybe even though not that many people read, their impact is greater than their numbers would indicate.
It's a valid argument and goes to show once again how hard it is to quantify the echo chamber.
Take this blog, for example. According to Alexa's web-tracking services, The Adventures of Chester is the 995,365th most read website on the internet. Alexa indicates that this is the ranking for the last 3 months. In the last week, though, this blog has been the 334,702nd most read website. That's quite a shift. Also, about 5 out of every 1 million internet users on the planet have visited here. But what does that mean?
Maybe it helps to look at a few others. Instapundit is number 9,236 over the last three months, and about 200 out of every million users have visited his site. TCSDaily, where I write a column is # 35,672. The Drudge Report is # 404. Google is number 3.
The idea of the long tail is that there are little content niches that may have a small following, but it's a following nonetheless. Even if only a handful of people listen to a certain band or buy a certain book, costs are such that the artist or author can still make a profit from that handful.
But perhaps the blogosphere is differently constructed. I'm quite certain I'm way down on the long end of the long tail when it comes to the internet. Yet occasionally traffic spikes, and something I've written receives credence for a much larger audience. Perhaps the trick is not to track the blogs, which are progenitors of memes, but to track the memes themselves. Some companies, like Technorati, attempt this, but I think they have a long way to go. There's a big difference between noting what people are talking about and tracking the development and mutations of a meme over its lifecycle.
Hugh Hewitt has used the term "mindshare" to describe what it is that content providers are competing for. Perhaps that has some merit, but in order to quantify it, one would have to know the size of the total. I don't think anyone does.
Well, I'll leave you with all of that and get back to regular stuff. Make of this post what you will.
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"For the brothers who have not used weapons before, please take this advice . . ."
Zeyad at Healing Iraq has a long post which excerpts posts from neighborhood message boards in Baghdad. I believe they are mostly Sunni neighborhoods. Talk about learning on the fly. Here's an excerpt:
Abdul Rahman – Iraq:Read the whole thing.
For the brothers who have not used weapons before, please take this advice:
1- Check your weapon if you have not used it before. You can ask your neighbour to teach you how to attach the magazine and to load and fire. Do not be ashamed that it would be said you don’t know how to use a weapon, as many people have not had a chance to.
2- Choose the appropriate spot on your roof that can provide you with cover and make it hard for the enemy to target you.
3- It is best if every two families gather in one house when the alarm of an attack is raised to keep spirits high.
4- When you shoot, try to make it intermittent so you do not waste your ammunition. Be patient until more fighters arrive and your neighbours start shooting too.
5- You may feel fear upon using a weapon for the first time or that something bad would happen to you, but think of your family and what awaits them if you are hesitant. Keep your honour and your children in front of your eye, and remember that they have burnt children with kerosene.
6- Make sure that you have an extra magazine because in the midst of action you may take away your weapon and forget your extra magazine. It is preferred that you tape two magazines together. Ask your neighbours how to do that. Practice with it several times.
7- Fear of using weapons will disappear with the first shot. Do not hesitate to pull the trigger and concentrate on hitting the enemy.
Commentary
Al Qaeda's attacks on Sadr City last week seem to have set Baghdad ablaze. From the tenor of the message boards, the posters are all exchanging intelligence on militia movements (it's telling that they refer to the Mahdi militia as the "Antichrist" militia) and locations, and advice on small unit tactics.
Zarqawi may be laughing from the grave. After the bombing of the golden mosque earlier in the year, the predominant narrative in the media was of increasing sectarian violence. Now, after the attack on Sadr City over the weekend, the Mahdi militia is out for blood. His civil war may have come.
Al Qaeda's timing, as always is impeccable. Just as this latest violence is instigated, President Bush flies to Jordan for talks with Maliki. Westhawk wondered last week whether Maliki's trip might be one-way.
Al-Sadr may soon, perhaps next week, make his play for power over Iraq’s Shi’ites. It would not surprise us if Mr. al-Maliki’s flight to Amman to meet Mr. Bush turned out to be one-way only. Should the al-Maliki government collapse, Iraq will not get another “national unity” government. What, if anything, has the U.S. done to prepare for this scenario?His larger point is that we have fine relations with the Kurds, and are developing a relationship with Sunni tribes, but if Sadr seizes the southern section of Iraq, what influence will the US have then?
Where is the vaunted Western press corps now? Surely they can observe fighting from the balconies of their hotels?
The next few days may be decisive in Iraq. Things to look for are:
-a collapse of the national government
-a mass exodus from Baghdad (Westhawk's post points to evidence that 150 Baghdad residents are entering Fallujah daily)
-de facto partition lines in the city (geography would indicate the Tigris, but you never know)
-the declaration of shadow or oppositional governments
If the government does collapse, the US should immediately put Iraq's military into receivership, as I recommend in my latest TCS column. Otherwise the units will evaporate, or choose sides. Even if it means installing American leadership in them or over them, it will be best if they are preserved and kept out of the fighting.
The prevailing image of the aftermath of a precipitous US withdrawal from Iraq has been a repeat of the last helicopter lifting off from Saigon in Vietnam. But those who either abhor this future or welcome it are wrong: the exact same effect was produced with far less drama at the ballot boxes in middle America on November 7th. Psychologically, the helicopters are long gone and everyone knows it. Now that America has departed, the aftermath continues apace. One aspect of magical realism is the inversion of cause and effect, such that "a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs." We are witnessing it.
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Go Native
My column at TCSDaily this week rejects the three choices for Iraq recently leaked from the Pentagon: go big, go long, or go home. Instead, it offers "go native" as an alternative.
Sadly, I'm quite sure it's about as useful as whispering in a hurricane, but one does what one can.
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November 27, 2006
Magical Realism Visits the Middle East
Students of Latin American literature will be familiar with "magical realism," a technique of writing frequently associated with Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, the Nobel-prize winning Colombian novelist. Wikipedia notes some elements of magical realism, several of which are excerpted here:
* Contains fantastical elementsIndeed, Garcia-Marquez's novels contain all of these elements. The primum inter pares of these is One Hundred Years of Solitude
* The fantastic elements may be intrinsically plausible but are never explained
* Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element . . .
* Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past
* Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs
* Incorporates legend or folklore
* Mirrors past against present; astral against physical planes; or characters one against another . . .
* Open-ended conclusion leaves the reader to determine whether the magical and/or the mundane rendering of the plot is more truthful or in accord with the world as it is.
(which has even made it into Oprah's Book Club, though it was first published in 1970). Garcia-Marquez's masterpiece contains such passages as this: "The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point."What could possibly be realistic in these passages? As Garcia-Marquez knew, it was the inherent fantastic nature of daily life in places like Columbia that made nearly anything believable so long as it was presented in a plausible way -- and if the storyteller believed it himself."She was in the crowd that was witnessing the sad spectacle of the man who had been turned into a snake for having disobeyed his parents."
"'What day is today?' Aureliano told him that it was Tuesday. 'I was thinking the same thing,' Jose Arcadio Buendia said, 'but suddenly I realized that it's still Monday, like yesterday. Look at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is Monday too.'"
"Colonel Aureliano Buendia organized thirty-two armed uprisings and he lost them all. He had seventeen male children by seventeen different women and they were exterminated one after the other on a single night before the oldest one had reached the age of thirty-five. He survived fourteen attempts on his life, seventy-three ambushes, and a firing squad."
"As soon as Jose Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sound of a pistol shot echoed through the house. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps, and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendia house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano Jose, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread."
Such lessons are illustrated in Mark Bowden's tale of the hunt for and killing of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious cocaine smuggler in history. In Killing Pablo
Not long after Pablo moved into La Catedral, the purity levels of cocaine on the streets of New York were restored and the prices dropped.Lawyer Roberto Uribe visited him weekly and found the place growing cozier. At first the living quarters, gymnasium, and cafeteria had seemed like a real prison, but gradually the furnishing became more lavish . . . Anything could be brought in. The prison guards were no more than Pablo's employees, and the army checkpoints just waved Pablo's trucks through . . . To have plenty of cash onhand, Pablo shipped in tightly rolled American hundred-dollar bills in milk cans, which would be buried in the fog of dawn at places around the prison. Two of the cans, each containing at least $1 million, were buried under the soccer field. A bar was installed, with a lounge and a disco. For the gymnasium there was a sauna. Inmates' "cells" were actually more like hotel suites, with living rooms, small kitchens, bedrooms, and bath. Workmen began constructing small, camouflaged cabanas uphill from the main prison. This is where Pablo and the other inmates intended to hide out if La Catedral was ever bombed or invaded. In the meantime, the cabanas made excellent retreats, where the men entertained women privately . . . Food was prepared for them by chefs Pablo hired away from fine restaurants, and once the bar and disco were up and running, he hosted many parties and even wedding receptions . . .
It was not a normal prison in other ways. Pablo, for instance, did not feel obliged to actually stay. He rarely missed an important pro soccer game in Medellin . . . Pablo considered such excursions minor . . . he did after all, always come back. He had made his deal with the state and intended to honor it . . .
Commentary
It is all too easy to see the similarities between the fictions penned by Garcia-Marquez, the surreal nature of negotiating with terrorists such as Pablo Escobar, and the presumptions of American political elites who believe that by engaging Iran and Syria -- thereby admitting their involvement in Iraq's chaos -- that such chaos might be ended on terms favorable to either the US or Iraq. Such dreams are the stuff of our own variety of magical realism, but rather than resulting in pleasant narrative escapes, they will result in the irrelevance of the United States, whether one means its military power, its national interests, or its once-admired revolutionary Democratic ideals.
Negotiating with Iran and Syria, whilst they hold positions of strength, is likely to be only the first of the magically realist positions that the US political class breathlessly advocates. There will be more, and the ones to follow will be even sillier. In one episode in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the entire village of Macondo succumbs to an incurable insomnia, "the most fearsome part of which," was not "the impossibility of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more critical manifestation: a loss of memory." Only through painstakingly going throughout the town and painting the names of objects upon them are the villagers able to remedy their memory loss.
With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan. He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana. Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee in order to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.While everyone forgets, we can begin to label the things we encounter today in the news, hoping that the values of the letters are not forgotten: evil, enemy, tyranny, appeasement, suicide, madness. The village of Macondo was saved from its insomnia-induced memory loss when a traveling gypsy magician returned from the dead and offered an antidote. Will something similar be conjured from history to redeem us?
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November 23, 2006
RAZR Blogging
Glenn Reynolds is holding a carnival on digital cameras, so I thought I'd weigh in myself. We have a little Sony something or other, but the main camera I've found myself using just for fun -- not for keepsakes -- is the one on my Motorola RAZR phone. Here are some examples (which I emailed myself from my phone; how cool is that!)
This is a snapshot from the Duke Gardens, where I was walking the dog the other day:
A couple of weeks ago the trees around here were spectacular. This is one in my neighbor's back yard:
When I was in DC recently, I snapped this shot of the Capitol. This is probably how the GOP is thinking of it these days:
The wife and I found ourselves ini Beaufort, NC a few weeks ago and I caught this picture of the sunset there:
A couple of months back we were in Seattle, and I took this shot from a skybridge at a mall downtown:
You know, I mostly use the camera to take quick candid shots of the dog. Here's one. Whenever I take her on a road trip, she likes to stare at me for long periods of time, during which, she usually falls asleep:
So, to sum up, I really like the camera in my phone and find myself using it much more than our regular digital camera, cause I always have my phone with me.
I'll leave you with this image: last night Mrs. Chester and Mom of Chester took the dog into one of the bedrooms, whereupon there was lots of giggling and secretiveness. When I opened the door to see what the heck was going on, the dog ran out like this:
Feel free to question my wife's sanity in the comments.
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O beautiful, for pilgrims' feet . . .
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thy ev'ry flaw
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!
Every year since 1961, the Wall Street Journal has carried two editorials on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The first is entitled, "The Desolate Wilderness" and the second, "And the Fair Land." From the first, from the chronicles of Plymouth Colony in 1620:
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.And from the second, a response written by the editorial board in 1961:
But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere--in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.
And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.
Commentary
Depending on how one counts, this is the 287th or so Thanksgiving in America. If there's one thing I'm grateful for, it is that thus far -- thus far -- we have proven Alexis de Tocqueville wrong:
By such means a kind of decent materialism may come to be established on earth, which will not corrupt souls but soften and imperceptibly loosen the springs of action . . .It is now probably time to prove Tocqueville wrong once again.The prospect really does frighten me that they may finally become so engrossed in a cowardly love of immediate pleasures that their interest in their own future and in that of their descendants may vanish, and that they will prefer tamely to follow the course of their destiny rather than make a sudden energetic effort necessary to set things right.
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November 22, 2006
. . . But somebody's got to do it
Der Spiegel carries a slideshow of photos of assassinated Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayal. He is seen in turn with various members of his family, including his wife, when they were married.
The Washington Post reports the details of Gemayal's death.
Gemayel, a 34-year-old father of two and an up-and-coming politician, was killed when his car was ambushed by men from one or two cars that collided with it in the suburban neighborhood of Jdeideh. At least three gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons equipped with silencers, hitting him in the head and chest, officials said. Television footage showed the tinted driver's-side window pocked with at least eight shots and the glass on the passenger's side shattered. The silver sedan's hood was crumpled from the collision.Doctors said Gemayel was dead when he arrived at the hospital, and his bodyguard later succumbed to his wounds.
Commentary
Is this a consolidation or an overextension? Iran announces it is seeking a new set of centrifuges. Syria tells James Baker it'll help in Iraq in exchange for the Golan Heights. Iran invites Iraq and Syria to a conference. Syria and Iraq re-establish diplomatic ties. Syria offs another prominent Lebanese politician.
Are Syria and Iran overplaying their hands? Have the carefully leaked deliberations of the Iraq Study Group been so much theater, meant to force an over-reaction? Victor Davis Hanson wrote in his book The Soul of Battle
Patton, of course, knew from his initial conversation with Bradley that he would be under orders to go north, not to continue east: "That's too daring for them. My guess is that our offensive will be called off and we will have to go up there and save their hides."
Tony Blankley, writing at RealClearPolitics, says this:
In fact, even those Americans who today can't wait to end our involvement in the "hopeless" war in Iraq will -- when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest -- join the chorus of outrage.Jules Crittenden writes that "It's a dirty job . . .Expedient Washington politicians, take note: Your public is fickle. They may cheer your decision today to get out of Iraq but vote you out of office tomorrow when they don't like the results . . .
Iran has been our persistent enemy for 27 years -- Syria longer. They may well be glad to give us cover while we retreat, but that would merely be an exercise in slightly delayed gratification, not self-denial, let alone benignity. So long as Iran is ruled by its current radical Shi'a theocracy, she will be vigorously and violently undercutting any potentially positive, peaceful forces in the region -- and is already triggering a prolonged clash with the terrified Sunni nations. Our absence from the region will only make matters far worse.
We need to start undermining by all methods available that dangerous Iranian regime -- as the Iranian people, free to express and implement their own opinions and policies, are our greatest natural allies in the Muslim Middle East.
We have only two choices: Get out and let the ensuing Middle East firestorm enflame the wider world; or, stay and with shrewder policies and growing material strength manage and contain the danger. [emphasis added]
This is the thing about dirty jobs that need to be done. They can only be ignored or left half-done for so long . . .But will any of this happen? What prevents it from happening right now? It is not a lack of resources. It is only a perception that all is lost, held by a large part of the political class. Fortunately, they are wrong. Sadly, they don't know it.This is why the current move to restrain the militias in Baghdad must be stepped up. This is why the calls for more troops there must be heeded. This is why the United States must pursue and destroy militias there ruthlessly and in force.
This is why these regimes need to know that their missteps will cost them, and that their own infrastructure, seats of power and persons are not immune from our threat of force as long as they abet murder, spread instability through the region, and seek weapons of mass destruction.
Belmont Club takes the pessimistic argument: The Rout Continues:
The most comical aspect of this whole rout is the way the diplomats will continue to prepare for the big meeting with Syria and Iran to broker a regional peace, something they believe "only a Superpower" can achieve. Alas, the habits of self-importance die hard. The countries are already making their own arrangements with the new victors, because those countries realize better than Barack Obama that you cannot charge a price for what you have already given away. And what will come of it all won't be peace. It will be war on a scale that will either draw America back into a larger cauldron or send it scurrying away behind whatever line of defense it thinks it has the will to hold. More than 60 years ago, Winston Churchill told the appeasers they had a choice between war and dishonor. They had chosen dishonor, and added that now they would have both war and dishonor.
If Bush lied and people died, then Pierre Gamayel is probably dead today because Nancy Pelosi told the truth last week: Bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as Speaker. James Baker didn't stage that.
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The Death Squads
The blog Healing Iraq points us to a BBC Channel Four special on Death Squads, which is available here on GoogleVideo. It's a very interesting report, running about 45 minutes. There's a bit of mandatory front-line reporter theatrics, but overall, very interesting.
What do you readers think?
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Why not raise military pay?
Tigerhawk has an interesting post which excerpts a report from Strategic Forecasting. StratFor makes this argument with regard to the draft:
We do not expect to be taken seriously on this proposal, but we will make it anyway: There is no inherent reason why enlistment -- or conscription -- should be targeted toward those in late adolescence. And there is no reason why the rich themselves, rather than the children of the rich, should not go to war. Or, for that matter, why older people with established skills should not be drawn into the military. That happened in World War II, and it could happen now. The military's stove-pipe approach to military careers, and the fact that it allows almost no lateral movement into service for 40- to 60-year-olds, is irrational. Even if we exclude combat arms, other specialties could be well-served by such a method -- which also would reduce the need for viciously expensive contractors.Traditionally, the draft has fallen on those who were barely adults, who had not yet had a chance to live, who were the least equipped to fight a complex war. Other age groups were safe. Rangel is talking about drafting the children of the rich. It would be much more interesting, if the United States were to introduce the draft, to impose it in a different way, on entirely different age groups. Let the young get on with starting their lives. Let those who have really benefited from society, who have already lived, ante up.
Commentary
Here's an idea: why not dramatically raise the pay of military personnel? Now there's some social engineering I could go for, and would be worth it even if it failed. Military payscales as they stand are structured such that pay rises dramatically during the first 10 years or so of service and then plateaus, rising much more slowly after that. This is for two reasons: The upper limits of pay are capped. No military officer can make more than a Congressman. The other reason is that at the ten year point, they figure you've drank the koolaid and are probably going to stick around for another 10, so you can get your nice military pension.
So why not say that there is no upper limit for all military officers, with the exception of those of flag rank? The rationale would be that those in the lower ranks can receive ever higher pay that matches their abilities. Seriously, what's the market value of a battalion commander? Certainly more than the $90k or so per year he makes. This is someone who can plan and execute complicated maneuvers involving hundreds of people. I'd put him at something like $200k.
But, treat promotion to flag rank as something similar to getting a federal judgeship or such. You take a pay cut out of service. That way, those of flag rank, who are most likely to be advising Congress, won't be making more than them.
Just my $.02.
Some would argue this would be far too expensive. But I bet it would be far less expensive than a draft, which would not be cheap. If the goal is to get all parts of society more interested in the military, why not sweeten the pot a little?
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November 21, 2006
In the mail: We Were One
"Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah"
Looks pretty good!
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November 20, 2006
I'm not asking you to ask, I'm telling you to listen
Iran judges itself the victor in the Iraq war. It is now inviting Syria and Iraq to Tehran for a conference.
Iran has invited the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to Tehran for a weekend summit with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to hash out ways to cooperate in curbing the runaway violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war and threatens to spread through the region, four key lawmakers told The Associated Press on Monday.Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has accepted the invitation and will fly to the Iranian capital Saturday, a close parliamentary associate said.
The Iranian diplomatic gambit appeared designed to upstage expected moves from Washington to include Syria and Iran in a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq, where more civilians have been killed in the first 20 days of November than in any other month since the AP began tallying the figures in April 2005.
The Iranian move was also a display of its increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it already has established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.
"All three countries intend to hold a three-way summit among Iraq, Iran and Syria to discuss the security situation and the repercussions for stability of the region," said Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party and a close aide to the prime minister.
Commentary
What do victors do next? They consolidate their gains. Belmont Club notes:
It was Mark Steyn who said that however evasively the Democratic party phrased it, the platform upon which they ran would be understood by its true name throughout the Middle East. George Packer, writing in the New Republic, said that now was the time to make arrangements to evacuate the thousands of Iraqis who believed in America; and that those Iraqis were even now making deals with whoever they thought would be in charge -- after the policy with the unstated name was implemented -- in order to survive.What will the conversations be like in Tehran? Hard to say, but one thing is sure: Tehran won't be asking for anything, but dictating terms instead. After the meeting, no one should be surprised at what comes next. Talabani might even change his tune as to how many US troops are needed for how long.But the Iranians can hardly contain their glee. They know what last elections meant; and so do Iraq and Syria. There may be no need to wait for the Baker report. It is being overtaken by events.
Phase One of the "Global War on Terror" is over. It has seen two vicious regimes destroyed in the Middle East. Thousands of Al Qaeda operatives have been killed or captured. A fledgling democracy grips power by its fingernails in Iraq. Iran is emboldened and is now the dominant power in the region. A new regional war looms around the periphery of Israel and another is beginning around the periphery of Somalila. Pakistan has ceded territory to the Taliban in Waziristan. The US military now has hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened veterans.
Writing in the Weekly Standard of his latest trip to Ramadi, Michael Fumento concludes thus:
People always ask how the Iraqis feel about Americans and the war in general. I respond that they just tell you what they think will prove advantageous to them, a combination of complaints and praise for Ameriki (America). Non-embedded American reporters run into the same thing. I asked one of the north Ramadi farmers through the translator if he thinks Ramadi is getting safer. He starts out with a few complaints, such as lack of water from the Euphrates for his fields because of rationing, and then tells me: "But safety is 100 percent better now that the Americans have come along." Baloney. Things got a lot more dangerous when we first came along. They may or may not be safer now than a year ago, but this guy isn't going to tell me. None of them will tell me.There are pluses and minuses. The war is not over, but the first part of it is largely ended. It might be presumptuous to end a chapter now, but the largest use of US force has been in Iraq, and that enterprise is now destined to wither away in one form or another. It's hard to know what comes next: an interlude, or Phase Two. The previous post The Golden Mean argued that those who favor attacking Iran are now largely in the wilderness. It's hard to know if there will even be a Phase Two. But for now, the last page has been turned and it will be time to wait for the sequel in whatever form it takes.Soldiers also give different accounts of the extent of progress in Ramadi. A Cougar driver told me nothing had changed since his last deployment, yet the very fact that he was driving into Ramadi in a convoy of just four trucks indicated otherwise. Another told me Ramadi is now "a thousand times better." Ultimately each was simply another blind man feeling his part of the elephant. With my three embeds in Anbar, I'd like to believe I've felt quite a few parts of the elephant.
Depressed? No. Thinking we won't eventually win? Not at all. Just being realistic. They don't call it a "long war" for nothing.
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The Golden Mean
Pundits and armcharists have struggled for months to articulate a military strategy vis a vis Iran that fits the following constraints: the nuclear program must be stopped; there can be no invasion; and if possible the regime should be removed.
Perhaps Arthur Herman has discovered the solution to this evasive strategic proof . . .
Continue reading "The Golden Mean"
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Pelosi's Slap At Security
I've written an article for the New York Post arguing that Alcee Hastings poses an incredible security risk as chair of the intelligence committee. You can read it here.
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November 19, 2006
In defense of "Adaptation"
Phil Carter, a well-respected blogger and Captain in the US Army Reserves, recently returned from a year in Iraq, takes issue with my article, "Adaptation" in the Weekly Standard's Daily Standard, in which I argued that through engagement in Iraq, the US military is slowly adapting to fighting irregular warfare. Phil offers several critiques [emphasis in the original], which I'll respond to one at a time:
Continue reading "In defense of "Adaptation""
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November 16, 2006
Podcasting update
Nearly 1,700 listeners have downloaded my podcast with Fred Ikle. I thought it was pretty interesting. If anyone has recommendations for future guests, comments, or other feedback, by all means, let it rip in the comments section, or send an email to the address in the sidebar.
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Two more great Iraq articles
No time to analyze at the moment, but check these out:
Reality Check II: Examining the consequences of redeployment by Fred Kagan and
Six Steps to Victory: The bottom-up plan to defeat the insurgency by Eric Eglund.
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What a Strange Way to Wage a War
It's another two-fer this week at TCSDaily. My new article makes as strong a case as possible for staying in Iraq.
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Adaptation: What the US military is learning in Iraq
I've written an article for the Weekly Standard's online edition arguing that the US military is learning in Iraq how to adapt to irregular warfare. Check it out here.
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November 15, 2006
All Together Now
The Guardian reports US Plans Last Big Push in Iraq:
President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations . . .Point one of the strategy calls for an increase rather than a decrease in overall US force levels inside Iraq, possibly by as many as 20,000 soldiers . . . The reinforcements will be used to secure Baghdad, scene of the worst sectarian and insurgent violence, and enable redeployments of US, coalition and Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country.
Point two of the plan stresses the importance of regional cooperation to the successful rehabilitation of Iraq. This could involve the convening of an international conference of neighbouring countries or more direct diplomatic, financial and economic involvement of US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait . . .
Point three focuses on reviving the national reconciliation process between Shia, Sunni and other ethnic and religious parties. According to the sources, creating a credible political framework will be portrayed as crucial in persuading Iraqis and neighbouring countries alike that Iraq can become a fully functional state . . .
Lastly, the sources said the study group recommendations will include a call for increased resources to be allocated by Congress to support additional troop deployments and fund the training and equipment of expanded Iraqi army and police forces. It will also stress the need to counter corruption, improve local government and curtail the power of religious courts.
Commentary
This all sounds eerily like the well-argued Weekly Standard article from earlier this week, Doubling Down in Iraq:
Consider these data: Between November 2004 and February 2005, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, the number of coalition soldiers in Iraq rose by 18,000. In that time, the number of Iraqi civilians killed fell by two-thirds, and the number of American troops wounded fell by three-fourths. The soldiers were soon pulled out; by the summer of 2005, American and Iraqi casualties rose again. Later that year, the same thing happened again. Between September and November of 2005, another 23,000 soldiers were deployed in Iraq; once again, both Iraqi and American casualties fell. In the early months of 2006, the number of soldiers fell again, and casualties spiraled up.To take one point at a time:The picture is clear: More soldiers mean less violence, hence fewer casualties. The larger the manpower investment in the war, the smaller the war's cost, to Iraqis and Americans alike. Iraq is not an unwinnable war: Rather, as the data just cited show, it is a war we have chosen not to win. And the difference between success and failure is not 300,000 more soldiers, as some would have it. One-tenth that number would make a large difference, and has done so in the past. One-sixth would likely prove decisive.
-Sending 20,000 more troops: Ever the contrarian, just when a new Democratic congress is claiming its victory as a mandate for withdrawal, Bush is ready to throw fuel on the fire.
But why 20,000? Why not more? The answers are probably: a) force availability, and b) the desire not to become fully engaged (even though we are already decisively engaged, as far at the operational theater goes. It seems that the "all hands on deck" approach is being dismissed.
Even so, 20,000 more troops can't hurt. It may prove very helpful indeed.
-Regional cooperation: The idea that Syria or Iran will help much here is laughable. But asking Kuwait or Saudi Arabia for assistance of some sort, whether diplomatic, financial, or of an intelligence nature, could pay great dividends. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are primarily Sunni states, and it will not please them to know that the US is abandoning Iraq to be dominated by Iran, and probably for its Sunni population to be ethnically cleansed. It is in their interests to assist us -- if only for the realpolitik goal of thwarting Iran's regional ambitions.
-Reviving reconciliation: This will be the most difficult of these tasks. For the Shias and Sunnis, the last three years have seen increasing levels of vengeance and vigilantism. A shrewd effort here might pay off, but what will be done differently that we aren't already doing?
-Increased funding for a variety of goals: Hard to know what to make of this. On its face, it seems kind of undefined. But the key word in the entire phrase might be "Congress." It might merely be an attempt to get Congress to fund the war without a lot of grandstanding, in order to create a bipartisan consensus for the whole thing. Then, a rising tide will lift all boats, or in this case, political ambitions.
Perhaps the most worrisome part of the plan, at least in the Guardian's portrayal, is it's time-based essence. "One last big push" implies an end, or, in other words, a timetable. Otherwise, one last push before what?
The Guardian infers that the "what" is the US presidential election. "The "last push" strategy is also intended to give Mr Bush and the Republicans "political time and space" to recover from their election drubbing and prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the official said."
Without a doubt, part of the "what" is in fact driven by domestic politics. But perhaps the other part is baldly enriching uranium next door . . .
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Iraq The Model on the Ministry of Education kidnappings
Iraq the Model believes that Iran was behind yesterday's brazen kidnapping of dozens of Iraqi Ministry of Education employees:
The mass abduction that shocked Baghdad yesterday was intended to be a clear message from Tehran-through its surrogates in Baghdad-to anyone who thinks productive dialogue with the Islamic republic over Iraq and Middle East peace is a possible option.The operation was a show of victory and it was so smooth and perfect that neither the MNF nor the Iraqi military could do a thing to stop it.
And today the show continues with the assassination of the colonel who's in charge of internal investigation in the department of national police, also known as the police commandos, one day after an investigation was ordered.Perhaps choosing a ministry like the higher education (which belongs to the Sunni Accord Front) is also a warning message to Sunni politicians who are preparing to send a delegation to Washington especially that the Accord bloc announced recently that they were looking forward to "clear the misunderstanding and mistrust" between them and the US administration to search for solutions for the situation in Iraq.
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Jihad beats McWorld
A story over the weekend in the Times chronicled the use of hip-hop music by Islamists to spread their messages.
HIP-HOP and rap artists are teaching young Muslims the ideology of radical Islamism through songs about the war in Iraq, the oppression of Muslims and the creation of an Islamic state governed by Sharia, or religious law.
Intelligence agencies have identified music as a “tool for indoctrination”. The phenomenon began with an American group called Soldiers of Allah. The group has since disbanded but its music and lyrics remain popular on the internet. Other groups in Britain, France and the US have been identified as giving cause for concern. Many use the derogatory term “kufur” to describe non-Muslims.[ . . . ]
“The music is very persuasive because it is giving young people ideas, and those ideas are what might motivate someone to become a jihadi. The material is all in English. It’s spreading a radical message to domestic populations that don’t speak Arabic or Urdu.”
Commentary
"American culture conquers all" is a meme that has circulated for years. A friend used to joke that if Britney Spears could have been convinced to do some concerts in Afghanistan, there would have been no need for a US invasion.
Yet stories like these hint at a different set of conclusions: that like any other Western innovation, pop culture can be subverted to serve the virus of radicalism. In this case, the use of hip hop, a form which glorifies the artist and his ego, serves to glamorize jihad.
Rather than meeting radicalism with apple pie and entreaties to freedom vacuously defined as popular music, jeans and McDonald's, it seems that the much-vaunted "war of ideas" that is sometimes heard but rarely elaborated upon will have to actually take place, and hold some substance. Moreover, it seems that any new memes introduced to fight against those of the radicals, will have to be Muslim in origin, even if they use Western forms, as seen here. It is a complex problem and one unlikely to be solved by any government, if it can be solved at all. Creating counternarratives is a task best left to the private sector in the West, and putting such narratives in the form of popular music will take some time -- not in the least because those most likely to do so probably feel that their lives will be endangered.
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November 14, 2006
Quick followups
Well, I've made my way home from DC now. I covered a tremendous event while there and hope to have a story out about it shortly.
Thanks to the many who emailed regarding my article, "Why Intellectuals Love Defeat." I suppose it is worth noting that I don't harbor any particular ill will toward intellectuals. In fact, I've been accused of being one myself.
Those who found that piece interesting may be want to visit this post at Shrinkwrapped.
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Greetings Opinionjournal Readers!
Opinionjournal.com has seen fit to republish my TCSDaily piece from yesterday, entitled Why Intellectuals Love Defeat. If you are visiting here for the first time, and are a warfare or foreign policy junkie, this blog is for you. Feel free to scroll down, check the archives, or see some of the Notable Posts. You might enjoy listening to my most recent podcast too, which is here. And if you liked the article from TCSDaily, here's my archive of work there.
Hope you'll visit again sometime!
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November 13, 2006
By a thousand cuts . . .
Travel has kept me from writing about what I'd intended today . . . but not to worry, as Westhawk has instead done so. See his piece on Britain's looming insurgency.
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Off to DC
There's much to write about today, but I'm hopping in the car to head to DC for an event there . . . More later . . .
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Why Intellectuals Love Defeat
My TCSDaily column from last week was delayed a couple of days to make room for my reaction piece to Rummy's resignation. So here's the column.
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November 10, 2006
The Adventures of Chester Radio: Interview with Fred Ikle
Today's guest on The Adventures of Chester Radio is Dr. Fred Ikle, who was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan Administration. Dr. Ikle joins the show to discuss his new book, Annihilation from Within
How might terrorists use weapons of mass destruction to seize power in weak states throughout the globe?
What are the national security implications of the Singularity? Or extended longevity?
How will religion reconcile itself to technology, in order to avoid "annihilation from within"?
Dr. Ikle and I cover all this and much more.
You can listen directly by clicking right here. Or you can subscribe to the show here, or subscribe via iTunes here.
The show is about 46 minutes long.
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231 Years For Our Illustrious Corps
Happy Birthday to all fellow Marines!
"Marines are about the most peculiar breed of human beings I have ever witnessed. They treat their service as if it were some kind of cult, plastering their emblem on almost everything they own, making themselves up to look like insane fanatics with haircuts to ungentlemanly lengths, worshipping their Commandant almost as if he were a god, and making weird animal noises like a band of savages. They'll fight like rabid dogs at the drop of a hat just for the sake of a little action, and are the cockiest sons of bitches I have ever known. Most have the foulest mouths and drink well beyond man's normal limits, but their high spirits and sense of brotherhood set them apart and, generally speaking, the United States Marines I've come in contact with are the most professional soldiers and the finest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet."
--An Anonymous Canadian Citizen
Semper Fidelis!
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Meanwhile, in Indonesia . . .
A few jihadists are on trial after deciding it would be nice to behead some teenage Christian schoolgirls, as their heads would make lovely trophies for Ramadan:
THREE Christian high school girls were beheaded as a Ramadan "trophy" by Indonesian militants who conceived the idea after a visit to Philippines jihadists, a court heard yesterday.More here.. . . Prosecutors yesterday detailed how Hasanuddin, Lilik and co-accused Irwanto Irano planned the schoolgirl beheadings with six other men. They prepared six machetes and black plastic bags for carrying off the severed heads and spent several days surveying the area where the students regularly passed by.
. . . The attackers cleanly beheaded three of the students but a fourth, Noviana Malewa, escaped after a struggle and ran away screaming. Her attackers gave chase but were unable to catch her.
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Entropy?
DefenseTech notes that
the wonks at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists have teamed up to make a Google Earth map of the nearly nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal.The map can be viewed on GoogleMaps here, or can be downloaded for GoogleEarth (which is itself free) here. [I prefer the GoogleEarth version, as it is less cluttered with other place names].The satellite map - drawn from this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists study -- "offers a fresh accounting of the extensive U.S. nuclear inventory, and its dynamic graphics let site users 'fly' onscreen across a sprawling network of military facilities in 12 states and in Europe," a press release reads.
One of the sites is the Pantex facility, outside Amarillo, TX. Robert Kaplan visited Pantex in the mid-1990s and wrote about the experience in his book An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future
. . . about which, Kaplan said this:
Say what you will about the logic, or illogic, of being able to destroy human civilization many times over; or about the cancer-causing radioactivity that the U.S. nuclear weapons program inflicted on its own citizens in the 1950s and after; or about other abuses that may have occurred over the decades. Still, never before in history, certainly not under any of the great bureaucratic despotisms of ancient Egypt of China, not in Aztec Mexico, not even in the vast death apparatuses of Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany, has so much destructive power been overseen so seamlessly and politely, with press tours given to any journalist who bothers to phone in advance and can prove American citizenship.Will the United States be around as long as these weapons exist and the plutonium cores remain lethal? Even after hundreds of years, some sort of government bureaucracy will be necessary to furnish maps of their underground locations. Even if science discovers a way to remove all the radioactivity instantly, that process, too, would require rigid government oversight. Moreover, the possibility that the coming century will see the elimination of nuclear weapons is unlikely: "Nations prefer familiar uncertainties to thoroughly unfamiliar leaps in the dark," said Hard professor Stanley Hoffman. Can the city council of Amarillo or even the state of Texas be trusted to oversee Pantex? I think not. That is the conundrum. The collapse of distances and the increasing interconnectedness of the world economy argue against the permanence of Washington. The visit to Pantex made it clear to me that the future (if there is to be one) will depend on the transformation of the federal government into an as-yet-undiscovered alloy -- a far more flexible, lightweight version of itself -- so as to appear almost invisible, even as it retains the power to oversee not only nuclear weapons but, for example, ever-scarce water resources. Whether this is likely, who can say?
Commentary
If Kaplan's musings are relevant to the United States, then one begins to see the smallest glimpse of the future problems that the nuclear programs of regimes such as North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran will cause us. What of nuclear storage facilities that are but a few dozen miles from Waziristan right now? What of North Korean facilities for which there is no government map or diagram?
In Iraq I once witnessed the accidental eruption of a large ammunition storage facility. It spanned acres and acres of hard, cracked dirt, with bunkers spaced here and there. Inside each one, remarkably cool given the outside temperature, were row upon row of Soviet-era munitions of all kinds: mortar and artillery shells, land mines, rockets for various purposes, ad infinitum. There were dozens of such bunkers. I had the opportunity to visit this area one day and did so. Even though on a battalion staff, I liked to go see the places where our Marine engineers would be working, so I'd know what I was talking about when they sent updates and so forth.
One morning around 9am, I was sitting at my desk doing regular stuff when the ammo point, at least two or so miles away, began to explode. As senior officers raced toward the site to check on our folks, I ran to the roof of my building to see what was happening. The entire site was going up. Even from a two-mile distance, I could feel the heat from the blasts.
After returning to the US, I realized when the IEDs started that it was sites like the one I had visited that were providing much of the materiel.
What sorts of IEDs will come out of Pakistan's ammo dumps if Musharraf's regime ever falls? Or from Yongbyon, should Kim depart the scene?
Kaplan says, "Even after hundreds of years, some sort of government bureaucracy will be necessary to furnish maps of their underground locations," and speaks of "the transformation of the federal government into an as-yet-undiscovered alloy -- a far more flexible, lightweight version of itself -- so as to appear almost invisible, even as it retains the power to oversee . . . nuclear weapons."
Yet perhaps this post itself hints at what the answer might truly be. Today, those who stumble upon the Federation of American Scientists page, or DefenseTech, or this blog, can find a GoogleMap of the locations of all American nuclear stockpiles. What might be available to such surfers in 5 years? Or 10? Is it not possible that instead of a government bureaucracy that serves as the caretaker and guardian of such knowledge, perhaps instead some other form of human organization -- something more organic, spontaneously ordered, and resilient -- will take its place?
Written by Chester at 12:50 AM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 9, 2006
The Thousand Fathers
All of a sudden, everyone's got an Iraq plan. The Small Wars Journal excerpts a subscription-only article from Inside the Pentagon:
A small group of officers assembled by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to draw up alternatives to the U.S. military strategy in Iraq is expected to conclude its work in December, according to defense sources. Some observers anticipate the recommendations will call for a dramatic change of course in the Persian Gulf nation and perhaps in the war on terrorism more broadly...It's the secret group to develop a backup plan in case the president doesn't like the public group's plan. Or, the secret group, being close to the top, has maybe already gotten wind of the public group's plan and decided it's awful . . .The Joint Staff review is being carried out in extraordinary secrecy. A spokesman for Pace said this week the group has no formal name but its role is “to assess what’s working and what’s not working” in Iraq and beyond. The spokesman did not respond by press time (Nov. 8) to a number of follow-up questions posed by a reporter.
Pace’s exploration of Iraq alternatives comes as a congressionally mandated study group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), is conducting an independent review of the strategy to combat the insurgency and sectarian violence in the war-torn nation.
Some experts speculate the Marine Corps general decided to convene his own panel to develop new alternatives for Iraq in case the Baker-Hamilton “Iraq Study Group” offers recommendations the military or the Bush administration find unacceptable...
Participants include Army Col. H.R. McMaster, who until earlier this year commanded a cavalry regiment that pacified the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Tall Afar, though violence has since returned to that town. Another team member is Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who directs an Army-Marine Corps counterinsurgency school at Fort Leavenworth, KS. The Marine Corps reportedly has sent Col. Thomas Greenwood, director of the Marine Command and Staff College, and the other services are represented on the study team, as well.
The Joint Staff strategy review kicked off in late September and was originally slated to last 60 days, though it now appears work will continue into December, according to officials familiar with the group who are not authorized to speak for it...
Meanwhile, Ralph Peters mentions the "all hands on deck" concept:
One proposal under discussion within the administration is to "send everything we've got" - to deploy every possible Army and Marine unit, no matter how worn and weary, for six months to "clean things up."Now there's an option for you!
John McCain said yesterday that Moqtada Al-Sadr needs "to be taken out," and that the "Mahdi Army continues to pose a threat."
Heck, even the preacher at the Duke Chapel is getting in on the game. I was out of town one weekend and missed it, but he delivered an eloquent sermon about Iraq on October 29th to what is probably a left-leaning congregation -- and he did it on parents' weekend to boot, just for maximum effect:
A number of people have asked me to preach a sermon about Iraq. Imagine you've let yourself into someone else's home and you find yourself in the kitchen. You reach up and open a cupboard door. Out fall a deluge of tightly stacked items, crashing down on your head and tumbling all over the floor. As well as being in a lot of pain, you may well feel pretty stupid. You may be saying to yourself, "I shouldn't be in this house. I certainly shouldn't have opened the door without checking what was inside." But feeling stupid and full of shame shouldn't stop you doing the one thing you simply must do. And that is, to get on your knees, clean up after yourself, and try to put everything back in the cupboard as best you can.He was kidding. Read the whole thing.That's pretty much all I have to say about Iraq. [laughter]
Commentary
This is the golden window for not only making significant changes, but for also building bipartisan consensus, before the show trials begin in January. If the Democrats are on board with an Iraq plan, even the media will drag themselves kicking and screaming toward slightly better coverage. They know where their bread is buttered.
As to my preacher, I have my differences with his view, but I'll take it. Whatever is necessary to not abandon Iraq.
James Baker is a brilliant diplomat and should not be misunderestimated. The events in the next week will spell salvation or doom in Mesopotamia.
Nancy Pelosi has her own take, recorded for posterity on HotAir. When interviewed by Fox News, "Asked if it was more important to win or leave Iraq, presumptive Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told Fox this:"
The point is, this isn't a war to win, it's a situation to be solved. And you define winning any way you want, but you must solve the problem.
It will be a very smart move to make some major changes to our strategy in Iraq before January, when this woman becomes the Speaker. At the same time, get as much buy-in from her posse as possible.
McCain's right too: No American voters are going to be upset if al Sadr goes away. In fact, best to kill The Man With One Red Shoe now, because if we do pull out of Iraq, he'll probably be the next dictator of Shiastan.
Bob Owens notes that the new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, was an advisor the the first President Bush when he screwed the Shi'ites, leading to the deaths of nearly a hundred thousand of them.
The obvious question is, "Did Bob Gates have a hand in shaping Bush's call for rebellion?"If so, would he also partially responsible for failing to support the rebellion, leading to one of Saddam's greatest genocides? I do not know the answers to these questions, but they must be asked before he is confirmed as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Written by Chester at 10:06 AM | Link | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 8, 2006
"Like Rumsfeld, Only Smaller"
TCSDaily is carrying a reaction piece I wrote after Rumsfeld's resignation today. Read it here.
Written by Chester at 11:52 PM | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Help Bill Roggio Go To Iraq
What's going to happen in Iraq? Bill Roggio wants to know. So he's going.
Hello, everyone. I am planning an embed to Iraq in the next three to four weeks. My goal is to embed with the Army in Baghdad and the Marines Ramadi. These two cities are the flash points in Iraq.Follow the link to donate to Bill. He's already embedded once each in Iraq and Afghanistan and did a great job.If you are not already aware, I have devoted all of my time and energy to this endeavor. This is my full-time job. I need your support to make this happen.
I believe this war is too important for me to sit back and let others do the work. I learned early on that our greatest deficiencies in this war are partisan free reporting, education on the nature of our enemy, and honest, informed reporting on how our troops are doing on the ground. Currently, there are 11 embedded reporters in Iraq, while the United States has over 150,000 troops in country.
I really need your help to keep this project going. Please support this embed by donating via PayPal.
Or, if you wish to send a check, email me at billroggio@gmail.com and I will send you an address.
Additionally, if you would like to donate a specific item, such as life insurance, an airline ticket or camera, email me and we can discuss the options.
Thank you as always for your support.
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Radio Interview: "Into the Night With Jack Riccardi"
Tonight I'll be discussing the news of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation on "Into the Night with Jack Riccardi," an AM radio show in San Antonio, Texas.
I believe the interview will be around 8:35pm CST and San Antonio readers can hear it at 550 AM.
UPDATE: The show also streams live at www.ktsa.com.
UPDATE: Well, that was a great segment, I thought. Lots of talk about the elections, Rummy, and what the whole ball of wax means.
Written by Chester at 9:13 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
The Best and the Worst
For the most magnanimous take possible on the election, see Bill Whittle:
Remember one thing before you go. The most important election we are ever likely to see in our lives was not this evening's election. Bush's re-election in 2004 was the one we HAD to have, and we got it. Be grateful for that, acknowledge that this loss is no one's fault but our own, congratulate the Democrats on their impressive wins and start figuring out how we can make sure this never EVER happens again. =)For the most pessimistic, see this, from a reader of the Corner, which I quote in full:I wish to tell my friends to be cheerful and especially to be of good will. Disappointments come and go, but moments of courage and integrity in dark hours will be there when the stars grow cold. We have lost the election, so let us maintain our determination, our dignity and our sense of humor, and let us take this moment to reflect upon how our actions have fallen short of our ideals. And then, finally, let's act like the Americans we are, roll up our sleeves and start rebuilding. We who have survived Civil War, the Nazis and the Communists can probably manage to find a way to preserve the Republic in the face of Speaker Pelosi.
America is not only much, much stronger than you imagine; it is stronger than you CAN imagine.
To those who have written me in anger over the years, I say sincere congratulations to you on a big win, and I genuinely hope it will remove some of the bitterness in your hearts and restore some belief in a system that was never broken.
As for me, I pledge to re-enter the fight with more energy, not less, and to continue to try to make the case I think needs to be made. I'll start on that tomorrow.
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." -- Winston ChurchillWelcome to the process of exhausting all other possibilities. This is where we separate the men from the boys. Pick a line and stand in it.
Those people who were serious about criticizing Rumsfeld (as opposed to those who were just vindictive or crazy) did so because they wanted our military to be doing more, not less, but does anyone seriously think that a Democratic Congress is going approve expenditures for the extra 50-70,000 troops that his serious critics say would be required to actually win in Iraq?
As a practical matter, I'm not sure how Iraq is possibly salvageable at this point given our current political situation. Zal is apparently on his way out, not wanting to be scapegoated as the man who lost Iraq and the real travesty is that he will be unlikely to receive half the official honors that Bremer and Tenet got despite his far more capable service to our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once the Baker Commission comes out, the administration is going to be under overwhelming pressure to implement the suggestions of the "bipartisan" commission and their failure to do so is just going to give the Democrats one more issue to run on to a pliable media and (near as I can determine) general public. Sooner or later, Baker's recommendations will likely be implemented, at which point al-Qaeda will be left in control of Anbar, Salahaddin, and possibly Babil and Diyala as well. They won't have any oil, but they'll have their failed state and that will give them a base from which to strike throughout the rest of the Middle East. Whether or not they are able to work out a manageable detente with Muqtada al-Sadr (who I expect will likely seize the southern part of the country), they won't be able to conquer his territory nor vice versa, meaning that we will still have a failed terrorist state made up of what was central Iraq to deal with. Oh, and a lot of innocent Iraqis are going to die, probably in the tens of thousands. But no one here will care about them, just like no one ever cares about the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese and Cambodians who died when we abandoned Vietnam, but the important thing is that we'll all feel that much better. The truly ironic thing is that Iraq is likely to be held up as an example of why "Arabs/Muslims can't handle democracy," because to believe otherwise would be to admit that we should have done more, fought harder, and worked better to save them. And we can't have that. It goes without saying that if this is going to be the result that we never should have gone into Iraq in the first place.
The loss of Iraq is almost certain to coincide with a major push in Afghanistan-Pakistan and having defeated the United States, al-Qaeda is likely to regard the momentum as being with them. My own assessment is that Pakistan is likely to fall (probably in a palace coup) before al-Qaeda and the Taliban make any serious headway in Afghanistan. That may preserve the Karzai government, but it will also turn bin Laden into a nuclear power. The only good news that I can take away from this is that if, not when, this occurs the United States is unlikely to lapse into a "Blame America First" or "Iraq Syndrome." We won't lift a finger to save Somalia (now almost certainly lost) or Iraq, but the fall of Pakistan is likely to awaken the general population from their slumber. If not now, then certainly once the nukes start flying, whether at India or at the United States in Europe. It also now goes without saying that the US will not prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran or take anything more than token gestures regarding North Korea. One thing I want to be clear on is that this isn't the apocalypse and al-Qaeda is not going to take over the Middle East in 2 years but that they will make a great deal of headway there if the US is emasculated in the interim as a result of domestic politics, particularly if the legislative branch now treats the executive as though it is part of an enemy state.
A word on Europe. As you are no doubt seeing in the media coverage, much of the European punditocracy is now giddy that the US has rejected the evils of Bushitleretardespotheocrat and all his works. While this is likely to make American tourist trips and cocktail parties more enjoyable, it is also nothing short of meaningless because, as we have seen over the last several years, Europe wants to be treated as a great power but does not wish to exert the necessary effort to actually be one. Our cooperation with them on intelligence and law enforcement matters would continue regardless of the event because they must [cooperate] for their own self-preservation, but they will not support sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism or increased troop commitments to Iraq or Afghanistan. In the case of the latter, they simply do not have the troops to send or the logistics to sustain them. . . .
The next 2 years are likely to suck, but I could always be wrong and the Democrats could always develop an uncharacteristic amount of sanity.
Commentary
"You win some and you lose some." "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." And so forth.
Well, actually, no. When you and your countrymen might die, it is whether you win or lose.
There no doubt are many furtive conversations taking place in both Iraqi kitchens and government councils right now.
"Should we go to Jordan?"
"Should we let the Americans attack Sadr?"
"If I try to tamp down the death squads, but the Americans leave, will the squads come for me?"
Written by Chester at 2:27 PM | Link | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
The End of the Rumsfeld Era
1:37pm: The President was just asked for metrics about his reading contest with Karl Rove. "I'm losing." "I obviously must have been working harder at the campaign than he was."
1:34pm: Here's an interesting interview with Rumsfeld by Thomas Barnett, from 2005.
1:28pm: I'll be on the Jack Riccardi Radio Show tonight, discussing this news. More on that later.
1:25pm: I predict that Bush's approval ratings will jump a few points in the next week or so.
1:21pm: I think this is a good move. If the Democrats want to subpoena Rumsfeld, they still can, but no one will care as much about what happens.
1:18pm: Bush says he didn't decide on Rummy before the election because he "didn't want to be talking about hypothetical troop levels or changes in the command structure coming down the stretch," and "I made that decision because I think it sends a bad signal to our troops that they think the commander in chief is constantly adjusting tactics and decisions based on politics."
1:16pm: Bush: "If we leave before the job is done, the country becomes more at risk."
1:11pm: Bush says he didn't want to inject a major decision about the war into the final days of the campaign. This is why he's making the announcement now.
The Rumsfeld era is over.
My bet is that Donald Rumsfeld has resigned.
UPDATE: Rumsfeld has resigned. Robert Gates is the new nominee for the Secretary of Defense.
UPDATE: Here is Gates' bio.
UPDATE: Bush: "We can overcome the temptation to divide this country between red and blue."
New updates from the top up from now on . . .
Written by Chester at 12:28 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 7, 2006
Election Day stuff -- LIVEBLOGGING
1:29am: No, not good night. The Fox News commentators are very animated about their desire for a united policy on Iraq. Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, and even -- KP -- what's her name, the Dem hottie female. I know that's not politically correct. But perhaps, just perhaps, if the kos crowd can be kept at bay, we can create a majority consensus on Iraq . . .
Perhaps . . .
12:35am: It looks like the Democrats have won the House. It looks like they may be within 1 seat of winning the Senate though it is impossible to tell.
No matter what happens, I want to be on the record: We must not abandon Iraq. We must not leave the Iraqis to their deaths. If so, our word will be worth nothing. Nothing.
Good night.
12:29am: If I may, I will quote my contribution to TCSDaily's election roundup:
Sometimes in life it's useful to speculate on what is deserved or undeserved. This is not one such time.The question sets up divisions between the parties, the bureaucracy, and the electorate. There's a war on and if we lose, we'll all lose together. So whoever takes the oath of office in January -- Democrat, Republican, or otherwise -- had better learn to work together and win this thing. If the Democrats gain one house of Congress, the President and Republicans should prepare to welcome them into the fight and rapidly build cross-the-aisle consensus. 'With malice toward none, with charity for all' should be on everyone's lips. Otherwise, the Republic will walk a trail of tears for a long time to come -- and possibly witness sorrows beyond imagination.
12:18am: Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, just said on Fox that Rumsfeld should go, but the anchor really had to drag it out of him.
12:06am: Wow. I can't believe how close the Allen-Webb race is. There will definitely be a recount there.
11:51pm: Read tomorrow's satirical headlines today: See Scrappleface. ' Democrats Unveil 'Contract with San Francisco'.
11:47pm: FoxNews just interviewed Michelle Malkin about "the blogs." Brit Hume called it something like "a remarkable marketplace of ideas." I'm going to see if Belmont Club is saying anything new, since the Democrats are reputed to have won.
11:42pm: The Midterm Midtacular is now being hosted by Stephen Colbert. I can't stand Stephen Colbert. Switching to Fox.
11:36pm: I have just opened a bottle of Crown Royal and am pouring a stout one over ice.
11:26pm: It appears that the Democrats now have enough seats to hold a majority in the house. Both RealClearPolitics and Drudge report so.
11:22pm: Switched to the Daily Show's "Midterm Midtacular" a few minutes. Key takeaway: "Joe Lieberman opened up an Ark of the Covenant can of whoopass" and "the Connecticut Senate race was a three-way, and like most three-ways it ended with one person watching awkwardly on the sidelines." Or some such.
11:13pm: Damn. RealClearPolitics now estimates that the Democrats need only one more seat.
11:07pm: I'm not hearing a whole lot about the Ford-Corker race. Drudge is now reporting that the Democrats need only two more seats to gain the majority. I'm going for another red wine refill.
11:02pm: Just had a lot of trouble accessing my site. This has been reported elsewhere as well. It's not too much to think that there might be a DDOS attack against Hosting Matters going on right now. Hosting Matters hosts a lot of conservative blogs (and a lot of stuff in general) and it is election day. This has happened before, by the way.
10:36pm: Drudge now reports that the Democrats need 5 more seats to gain the House, but still has no backup info. I switched to red wine a little while ago and am now going for a refill.
10:33pm: Random thought of the day: I don't understand the midwest. Being a southerner, superficially, the midwest seems very similar: some big cities, but a lot of rural areas and small towns. Lots of religious people, in Protestant denominations. Probably a similar ethnic breakdown. Yet the midwest always seems so up in the air as to whether it will be red or blue, whereas the south is red. I guess that shows my age, since the south hasn't always been that way. But it just seems weird to me that there's another part of the country that is so similar, yet so different politically.
10:24pm: Drudge is now reporting that the Dems need only 7 more seats to gain the House. But they have no link. It's not clear where they are getting their info.
10:18pm: A very reputable national news service calls it: Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections! [via the WSJ's Election Day Blog Watch].
10:16pm: From the big blogger bash in DC, pictures from Wonkette and Ann Althouse. Pretty funny. I was just in Adams-Morgan the other weekend.
9:56pm: My college roommate, whom I bet $5 that the Democrats will pick up no more than 18 seats in the House, just emailed for some pre-emptive gloating. I think he is far too pre-emptive.
9:49pm: Mrs. Chester has now finished watching "Dancing With the Stars" and expresses disbelief both that Mike Nifong has been re-elected, and that Britney Spears has filed for divorce.
9:36pm: Fox reports that the White House is upbeat.
9:32pm: Fox is projecting that Lincoln Chafee has lost in Rhode Island, and RealClearPolitics has not declared it too.
9:28pm: The Webb-Allen race has tightened to five-tenths of a percentage point, with 80% of the precints reporting.
9:23pm: Damn. Mike Nifong has just won the Durham County District Attorney's race. I guess the show must go on.
9:19pm: Ken Mehlman sounds pretty good on explaining Iraq. He just made the case that fighting a movement is much more difficult than fighting a nation. I thought he sounded pretty intelligent on the issue.
9:09pm: Thoughts, ideas, concerns? Shoot me an email at "terrier_manchester" at "yahoo.com". Also, welcome Wizbang readers!
9:06pm: Howard Dean on Fox was just asked if the Democrats win the House if it will be an ideological victory or a party victory. He replies that it will be a victory for a new direction. Perhaps, Howard, but why not tell us what direction? In Iraq at least, we know what the direction will be. Not exactly "with your shield or on it."
9:05pm: RealClearPolitics seems cautiously optimistic that there might be a chance for the GOP to retain Foley's seat in Florida.
8:59pm: Allen is over Webb 50.35% to 48.44%, with 66% of the precints reporting. I'm no expert, but it seems unlikely that Webb will pull ahead in the last 33%. But it is VERY tight.
8:50pm: Looks like Santorum is out. That's a shame. The numbers are pretty amazing. He only got 38% of the vote. Wow. I bet we'll see more of him. Peggy Noonan recently had the same opinion.
8:46pm: Mrs. Chester just rose from a brief nap after a 40 hour shift at Duke's pediatric ward. Hopefully, "Dancing with the Stars" will put her in a good mood.
8:40pm: A Fox commentator just referenced one of Santorum's speeches. I linked to it last week, and it is indeed outstanding. Read the whole thing.
8:37pm: Cracked the second Pacifico of the evening.
8:31pm: Just realized that this segment of CNN is being hosted by Anderson Cooper. Since he's the a**hole who hosted some insurgent snuff films a few weeks ago, I don't think I'm going to watch any more CNN. Switching to Fox.
8:30pm: New term just used on CNN: "overpundify."
8:29pm: CNN also just had this AARP ad, which was quite funny.
8:27pm: Back on CNN, I just saw an ad in which lots of regular people read stories about what is happening in Darfur. Hmm. I wonder if we pull out of Iraq, and it all goes to hell, and there is some serious ethnic cleansing and genocide, I wonder if maybe then the Democrats might be up for an intervention on humanitarian grounds?
8:20pm: Just for fun, I found this old bit of quotes from our presumptive new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, via Jim Taranto:
This weekend "60 Minutes" aired Lesley Stahl's interview with Nancy Pelosi, who most likely will become speaker if Democrats take the House. The Web write-up suggests how shallow is the Democratic Party's thinking on Iraq:I mean this with the utmost sincerity: God help us.One issue that she is fighting about here is Iraq. She opposed the war from the start and now, like her, most Democrats support a phased withdrawal of troops beginning later this year.It seems entirely too pat to say that if we leave Iraq, so will the jihadists. After all, there were jihadists in Afghanistan long before we arrived. But let's say it's true. Where does Pelosi think the jihadists will go? Isn't she worried that some of them will come here?"Does that not open you up then to that charge of cutting and running? This is just what they're saying," Stahl asks.
"The issue is them. The issue is the war they got us into," Pelosi replies. "If the president wants to say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, he's not right."
"Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?" Stahl asks.
"No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan," Pelosi says.
"But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?" Stahl continues.
"They have," Pelosi agrees. "The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. They'll stay there as long as we're there."
8:18pm: Flipping to The Daily Show just for good measure. Jerry Seinfeld is the guest.
8:13pm: On the way back to Fox, just fell upon some Disney movie about the Presidential family, with a teenage first daughter saying, "Daddy, I don't want to be dragged to another fundraiser where a bunch of rich old people pay money to hang out with us." Hmm. Looks like something Mrs. Chester would like.
8:12pm: Just switched to MSNBC. Man, Chris Matthews is annoying.
8:04pm: On CNN, someone just called Rush a "gasbag." I think it's hilarious when the press attacks Rush. Bill Bennett is now defending him. Good for him. I think it's hilarious when Rush gets attacked because it's usually painfully obvious that the attackers have never listened to his show. Rush is smart and has quite a gift for show-business. He's very entertaining. And he always plays clips of what he says versus how it was portrayed. It's usually pretty funny. I happened to be in the car while John Kerry was defending his gaffe last week and Rush carried it live while talking in the background. When Kerry got worked up, Rush started saying, "Mention me! Mention me! Mention me!" Then, sure enough, Kerry mentioned him. It was hilarious. I don't agree with a some of what he says, but it can't be denied that the man is talented.
8pm: Well, no news on Nifong.
7:58pm: In a moment, TiVo is going to kick in and start recording "Dancing with the stars" for Mrs. Chester. I will most certainly be escaping to the other TV by then. Fox is declaring Indiana 8 as a gain for the Democrats, with I think 81% reporting.
7:57pm: Ugh. Someone in the audience just asked if the US military should approach China about counterinsurgency, since the Chinese state was established with an insurgency. Hmm. My guess is: No. Back to politics.
7:52pm: While switching to Fox, I accidentally hit CSPAN2 first and find that they're showing a conference by the CATO institute on the military and counterinsurgency. Hmm. Could be worth a slight detour.
7:47pm: Jeff Greenfield on CNN just called Indiana 09 "the seat that can't make up its mind," saying, "we should call this the Hamlet of congressional seats." [Pause] Ahem. Switching to Fox now.
7:44pm: Just cracked my first Pacifico of the evening. I have a column to write, but have decided that its content will depend on the election outcome. So might as well enjoy . . .
7:42pm: I meant to say earlier that although it rained like nobody's business today, and that wasn't fun, there were no problems whatsoever at my own polling place. I thought the NC system worked pretty well.
UPDATE: 7:40 EST: Maybe I'll do a bit of live-blogging. Here goes. Wolf Blitzer on CNN has a certain gleam in his eye as he discusses the possibility of the Democrats taking the house.
Well, I cast my votes earlier today. I'm very interested to see how the Durham County District Attorney turns out. I voted against Mike Nifong. It's unfortunate that the legal system does not include the crime of "wanton jackassery," as I'm sure he could be charged with it.
I also voted for Steve Acuff to be my congressman. We'll see how that turns out. It was an uphill battle from the start . . .
Written by Chester at 6:18 PM | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 6, 2006
Escape
Well, I've just bet my college roommate, a diehard Democrat, $5 that the Democrats will gain no more than 18 seats tomorrow in the House.
Having done that, I'm off to go see this Borat flim that everyone's talking about. That should be a good escape.
If you need some very independent and interesting analysis, do consider Election Projection.
UPDATE: Well, Borat was at turns both hilarious and revolting. Would I recommend it? Hmm. Depends on to whom. To college buddies, sure. To my mom, not so much.
Written by Chester at 7:38 PM | Link | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
A toast to heroic journalists!
David Halberstam has written a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review that lauds Peter Arnett's reportage in Vietnam. It ends with this:
Even as I write there are in some parts of the world young men and women going out every day, and doing something difficult and complicated, something that takes a surprisingly varied array of talentsHmm. Who might that be? Warriors?
— the ability to write quickly, a rare, almost intuitive sense of politics, and of course a certain kind of courage, the courage to stand up to powerful people who are always trying to bend you and intimidate you. When I was a young man in Saigon I was privileged enough to witness such work and to see a great institution at its best, at a moment in a democracy when it mattered.
Commentary
Will these memes ever die? How long can the glory years of the press in Vietnam keep their minds afire? Halberstam's tribute to Arnett is completely without any mention of the coverage of the Tet offensive -- was that a great institution at its best? It was certainly at a moment in a democracy when it mattered. Maybe Arnett was never tarnished -- or blessed -- with participation in that holy event.
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More interviews with Army MPs
If you enjoyed my podcast on Friday with two Army MPs in Baghdad, you should see Bob Owen's print interview with them as well.
Written by Chester at 1:26 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
A Coffin for Dimitrios
While traveling over the weekend I read A Coffin for Dimitrios
The premise goes something like this: An Englishman who is a successful writer of detective stories is vacationing in Turkey and has a chance social encounter with the head of the Turkish secret police. While they are discussing another issue entirely, the Turk has to attend to a professional matter: dealing with the death of one Dimitrios, a murderer, spy, assassin, and drug smuggler whose body has just turned up. The writer, who has always written crime fiction, but never really witnessed the underworld up close, is fascinated by Dimitrios' life and decides to trace it on his own out of curiosity . . .
To tell more would begin to spoil things. Hopefully that's enough to whet your appetite. The book was outstanding and I'm adding it to the Adventures of Chester Bookstore. Put it on your Christmas list!
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TCS on Election 2006
Over at TCSDaily:
Every year the President gives his State of the Union address. And every two years, Americans get to deliver their sense of the state of the union by voting. So what will it be in '06? We asked several TCS contributors to predict what will happen on Tuesday; and then we asked them to say what should happen. Consider this the state of TCS thinking about American politics at the end of 2006.I tossed my own thoughts into the brew. You can read it here.
Written by Chester at 9:32 AM | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 3, 2006
Weekend Reading: God, Science, Humanity's Future
For some reason there seem to be a slew of articles coming out about the intersection of science, reason, faith, God, and the future of humanity. Put it all together and you could almost make an anthology of sorts.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: God, Science, Humanity's Future"
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The Adventures of Chester Radio: Interview with Army Military Police in Baghdad
Today's guests on The Adventures of Chester Radio are Staff Sergeant Jason Oliver and Specialist Kimberly McGinness, two Army military police who are training the Iraqi police forces in Baghdad.
Staff Sergeant Oliver and Specialist McGinness discuss the competence of the police, what the biggest crimes are ("auto theft"), how they get around the language barrier, Specialist McGinness' view of why the Iraqis might be a little frightened of her ("I carry a bigger weapon than they do"), and the bravery of the Iraqis.
This episode is about 18 minutes long.
You can listen immediately by clicking right here. Or you can subscribe to the show here. You can even subscribe via iTunes here.
Special thanks to US Central Command Public Affairs for making this possible.
Written by Chester at 1:29 PM | Link | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Government in Time of War
This week's column is up over at TCSDaily. It wonders if, in a time of long-term war, the non-war functions of government won't reduce to some diminished capability. See for yourself.
Written by Chester at 8:55 AM | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 2, 2006
The Final Surprise: El-Baradei Strikes Again
The New York has launched its final, pre-weekend October Surprise of the silly season. An article entitled U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide has just been posted on its site, and is getting the all caps, red text treatment from the Drudge Report. The article alleges that the US archive of seized Iraqi documents, released on the internet in March of 2006, contained some documents with detailed plans for the construction of nuclear weapons.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.The Times is careful to note that these plans were from before the first Gulf War.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.The alarm was raised by the IAEA, according to the Times.
In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and some soon raised concerns. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called “Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995.” That description is potentially misleading since the research occurred years earlier.The Iraqi document is marked “Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95),” meaning it was preparatory for the “Full, Final, Complete Disclosure” that Iraq made to United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three diagrams showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters.
On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, “Summary of technical achievements of Iraq’s former nuclear program.” It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq’s bomb design. Topics included physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early October, diplomats and officials said, United Nations arms inspectors in New York and their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do.
Commentary
The diplomats "were alarmed and discussing what to do." It seems obvious, does it not, to pick up the phone and call your nearest American colleague and tell him he's got an anarchist's cookbook up on his internet? Certainly no government official who expects to keep his job would sit on such information? If, as the Times notes, the documents in question were only a dozen or so in number, then would it not take the retasking of a couple of translators and perhaps 6 hours of time from a nuclear physicist to determine if the documents in question are what the diplomats suspected them to be?
Or does one sit on this information for a few weeks, instead picking up the phone to the New York Times, and craft yet another October Surprise?
It's not impossible. In fact, it happened before -- two years ago, with the same agency! The IAEA, that is. The IAEA played a big part in the last October Surprise by the New York Times -- the aptly named Al Qaqaa story, now safely ensconced behind the TimesSelect firewall. The abstract notes, "International Atomic Energy Agency warned of danger of these explosives before war . . ."
There is one other aspect of the Times story that seems strange. The documents in question are described by -- surprise! -- an anonymous intelligence official, like this:
A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.”Doesn't this buttress the argument that Saddam could easily have restarted his nuclear weapons program if the sanctions regime collapsed? If the Arabic documents can show Iran's scientists how to get around failures, then surely they could show Iraq's?
Another question: why were the nuke documents only begun to be released in September and earlier October? Where were they until then?
Tomorrow will be yet another interesting day in the silly season.
Written by Chester at 10:46 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
The Man With One Red Shoe
Has Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army played a role in the presumed capture of a US Army translator? Is Sadr culpable for this, or has some other faction of his force performed this act? Confederate Yankee offers one explanation:
The fact that al-Taei (or as this article spells it "al-Taayie") did not turn up dead within the first 72 hours of his abduction, and the fact that he is believed to have been captured by the Mahdi Army instead of al Qaeda, leads me to believe that he was abducted not to become a victim of torture and murder, but to become a political pawn for one of the factions of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.The idea that al-Sadr needs killing, and that this might be accomplished by his own forces working against him, was floated recently by Bill Roggio as well:What remains to be seen, and what we may never know, is whether al-Taei's capture is something that al-Sadr had a hand in, or if a faction within his loosely-organized Mahdi Army Militia conducted the kidnapping independently. If al-Taei's abduction was not conducted with al-Sadr's knowledge or blessing, there is the possibility that the kidnapping is evidence of a rift between factions of the Mahdi Army.
If so (and this is purely speculation), it could be that factions within the Mahdi Army are using the kidnapping to make a run on al-Sadr's control of the militia. The kidnapping places a microscope on al-Sadr (note the renewed calls to have him killed, which stem at least in part from the kidnapping), and depending on internal Iraqi politics, could rattle his standing with both other Mahdi Army factions and with the Iraqi government, which for now, seems to be doing the bidding of al-Sadr (on that, at least, Sullivan was correct).
If al-Sadr starts to lose (more) control of the Madhi Army, his importance to and influence within the Iraqi government may wane, and the possibility that Ralph Peters may eventually get his wish, perhaps courtesy of the apparently fragmenting Mahdi Army itself.
Sadr can no longer claim these are the acts of mere 'rogue elements' of his Mahdi Army. The clashes between Mahdi Army units and Iraqi and U.S. forces are occurring on a near-daily basis, and the sectarian violence is largely driven by Mahdi fighters. Ralph Peters argues it is time for the U.S. to kill Sadr. However, this would give Sadr the status of martyr to the 'occupiers' and could create unnecessary violence. We argue this is a task best left to the Iraqis. Ideally, a 'rogue element' of the Mahdi Army would kill him (or so it would appear). This would be just desserts for Sadr's shallow attempts at obfuscating his militia's role in the fighting. And it would spawn a round of internecine fighting that would do much of the needed dirty work of dismantling the Mahdi Army.
Commentary
The question of whether Sadr is behind the kidnapping, and whether his control of his forces seems to be slipping, is impossible to know. Since the invasion, Sadr has proven to be an adroit player of the Iraqi game. His continued presence after four years of other Iraqi politicians -- or leaders -- who have largely come and gone seems to testify against the idea that he has lost control over his own forces.
So then, taking that as case A, allow case B: Sadr's influence has grown to the point that he is now making use of it. The kidnapping of an American and the subsequent negotiations to maintain his release create a certain legitimacy for Sadr. Perhaps a year ago such an action would have warranted open battle with his forces; perhaps now he has struck because he knows such an outcome is unlikely, and that the Americans, coming to him with hat in hand, asking if he knows anything about a missing translator, will only buttress his own prestige within the Iraqi community.
It may be possible in the coming days to read between the lines of stories on this issue and deduce whether case A or case B is correct.
Regardless, Sadr should have been killed long ago. Many would argue that this is not necessary: only a significant defanging of his forces would have marginalized him. But this is to discount the nature of Shia Islam, which if nothing else, tends toward messianism. In other words, the big boss himself is frequently the source of strength, and not merely the forces with which he surrounds himself. See Ayatollah Khomeini.
The 1980s comedy The Man with One Red Shoe stars Dabney Coleman as a CIA officer who has been duped into thinking that Tom Hanks, a hapless violinist, is a spy. Coleman pursues Hanks left and right throughout the film, always being asked by one of his henchmen, "Sir, why don't we just kill him?" Coleman always has a better answer about how to manipulate him instead. Finally, at his wits' end, Coleman finally says, "Ok." But by then it's too late. Hanks has run off with a female spy.
Perhaps the Iraqi electorate is the female in this twisted analogy, and al-Sadr is the man with one red shoe. Sadly, I think we'll be seeing much more of him, not less.
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A single shot won't end the war
I've written a review of "Flags of Our Fathers" for the Washington Examiner. You can read it here.
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November 1, 2006
REDS on DVD
The 1981 film REDS has been released on DVD in a 25th Anniversary Edition. REDS received 12 Oscar nominations and took home three awards. Written, produced, directed by, and starring Warren Beatty as Jack Reed, the American Communist and labor organizer of the early 20th century, it is an excellent story of two love affairs: the first is between Reed and Louise Bryant (admirably portrayed by Diane Keaton) who become lovers, separate, get married, and are then estranged again; and the second is the love affair that a certain class of American intellectuals had with Communism in the period immediately preceding, during, and after the Bolshevik Revolution. Beatty and Keaton do a superb job, and the other excellent part is that of Eugene O'Neill, the playwright, performed by Jack Nicholson.
The DVD quality is excellent. I watch a lot of older films and all too often the DVD versions seem to be straight copies of the VHS original and of poorer quality. In this case, the film quality is excellent.
Nicholson and Keaton crackle as they engage each other throughout the story, and have one exchange that speaks to the degree to which love, sex, and utopian ideas become intertwined in the world of the revolutionary intellectual. Jack has departed for Russia to seek the Comintern's approval of the new Communist Labor Party of America. Louise has refused to go with him and has gone to Eugene O'Neill for solace.
Gene: Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual's eyes shine and they start to talk to me about "the Russian people." Something in me says, "Watch it. A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith," and I wonder why a lovely wife like Louise Reed, who's just seen the brave new world, is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me, instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It's, um, almost worth being converted.Jack Reed's perpetual dilemma is the fact that he is an excellent writer, yet desires to be a revolutionary. He is forever caught between attempting to sway people through his prose and organize them in labor societies.Louise: Well, I was wrong to come.
Gene: You and Jack have a lot of middle class dreams for two radicals. Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man -- whose one dream is to be rich enough not to have to work -- into a revolution led by his party. You dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it'll be missionary work rather than sex. I'm sorry to see you and Jack so serious about your sports. I'm particularly disappointed in you, Louise. You had a lighter touch when you were touting free love.
Ultimately, and it doesn't spoil the film to say so, Jack and Louise suffer from that inescapable fate of revolutionary utopian idealists: disillusionment that the reality they have helped to create is not what it should be.
REDS is an excellent film about a part of American history often overlooked, and about the passions of intellectuals. Though a bit long at 195 minutes, I recommend it.
Interested readers may also want to see Jack Reed's book on the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook The World
Thanks to SpecialOpsMedia for my review copy.
Written by Chester at 12:23 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
